This week, a Texas lady was taken into custody on suspicion of stealing a mortuary vehicle from outside a hospital that contained a deceased person’s body.
The Fort Worth Police Department reports that 36-year-old Valerie Traglor-Ellis, of the rural Fort Worth suburb of Azle, is charged with one count each of vehicular theft and abuse of a body.
The event in issue started on Tuesday night at approximately 7 p.m. when police received a report about a car that had been taken from one of the hospital’s several parking spaces on South Main Street, John Peter Smith.
The trauma center, sometimes known by locals as “JPS,” is a publicly-funded hospital managed by Tarrant County that is mostly recognized for its psychiatric and emergency department services. It is situated in the center of the city’s appropriately called Hospital District.
When police arrived, they discovered that the deceased driver of a mortuary transport van had left his car to retrieve another body from inside the hospital. But the deceased man inside the van was gone, and so was the van itself when he returned.
“While the driver was inside the hospital, the suspect, an adult female, entered the van without permission of the driver and fled the parking lot,” a Fort Worth police spokesperson stated.
A short while later, the van was found on Park Place Avenue, a long, hilly, sloping backstreet that forms the majority of the eastern boundary of the enormous, 64-acre Fort Worth Zoo. Park Place Avenue is located approximately two miles straight west.
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“The suspect was located a short time later and taken into custody without incident and transported to the Fort Worth City Jail,” police stated. “The vehicle and the deceased person being transported were released to the driver of the mortuary service.”
As of right now, there is no known reason for the incident, and police are not making any public assumptions about the purported thefts.
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